Tag: CCS

OWNER:Mississippi Power Company (Southern Company)PROJECT:Greenfield power plant, ammonia byproduct

SUMMARY STATUS:Operational / Abandoned
The Kemper County Energy Facility, a 582 MW power plant, was one of the US DOE's flagship "clean coal" projects. It would have produced ammonia as a byproduct of its coal-to-syngas process. The plant has been producing power from natural gas since August 2014, but experienced profound delays and budget overruns with the coal portion, which now appears to have been abandoned, with layoffs at the adjacent coal mine.

SUMMARY STATUS:Operational
Dakota Gasification Company's new urea plant started up early in 2018, when granular urea became the 11th product made at the Great Plains Synfuels Plant (DEF became the 12th). Fertilizers now represent more than 50% of the entire plant's expected revenues. Construction on the new urea plant began in Summer 2014, and would have been completed by mid-2017 but destructive storms flattened the new urea storage building in 2016, which had to be demolished and the foundations ripped out before construction could restart. A small ammonia expansion was completed during the project.

SUMMARY STATUS: Ammonia expansion Cancelled, Urea brownfield Operational
In April 2017, Agrium "successfully commissioned" its brownfield urea plant at Borger, which had been under construction since March 2014, more than a year behind schedule and 10% over budget. An expected debottleneck of the ammonia line was cancelled in 2015. In January 2018, Nutrien was formed through a "merger of equals" between Agrium and PotashCorp that was originally announced in September 2016.

SUMMARY STATUS:Operational
US Nitrogen broke ground in February 2012, when it expected its new plant to start up in March 2014, but the project was fraught with problems. Permits were revised and reissued repeatedly, and the site had major issues with compliance, which appear to continue even today. Construction and design issues led to major delays and lawsuits. The start-up process eventually began in May 2015 but the ammonia plant didn't start up until June 2016. Within a couple months, the site was temporarily shut down under federal and state investigation of permit compliance; more emission mishaps occurred in April 2017. The company announced that the plant was fully operational in January 2017 but, since then, it's not clear whether plant has been producing much product.

SUMMARY STATUS:On hold, indefinitely
Despite years of development, this "clean coal" project never came together. The local oil field backed out, leaving HECA in an existential crisis with no way to sell or sequester its CO2 and, in March 2016, the project put itself on indefinite hold, by withdrawing its application to the CEC.

SUMMARY STATUS:Bankrupt
The Texas Clean Energy Project was going to be a major "clean coal" power plant with significant urea byproduct but DOE effectively killed the project when it suspended funding. Initiated in 2010 and originally scheduled to be completed by 2014, the project continually failed to raise financing for such a long time that the DOE finally withdrew its support in mid-2016. In December 2016, the developers announced one last idea, ditching power generation altogether to focus on urea production but soon after, in October 2017, the company went bankrupt.